Carbonation is one week, stabilized and optimal in three weeks. In my opinion it takes three weeks no matter what technique you use. I find the set and forget to be the best and most easily accurate method.

I agree with BK in that full equilibrium will take somewhere around 2-3 weeks. Most people will see some carbonation at 1 week but it's far less than the volumes you see on the chart for that given temp/pressure.

You can have a beer carbed in 2 hours if you want to. Get it really cold, crank the psi and shake it. It will be carbed in hours.

However, it will still take about 3 weeks for the carbonic acid levels to equalize and the beer to stabilize to a normal condition. You can serve your beer after a fast carb (I have) but it will not be as good as it can be and will be in 3 weeks.

Now, realistically, how many people will sense that something is weird about your beer because of funny carb or higher than normal carbinic acid levels??? not many.

As with everything homebrew, there are tons of ways to do it, tons of opinions, and tons of corners that can be easily cut if you don't really care that much.

I don't know about most people but to me, recently carbed beer just tastes horrible. It's even worse when the beer is young. Lately I've been putting 40psi on beer that I recently racked to keg, slosh it back and forth for 5 minutes, disconnect and leave it outside of the kegger for a couple weeks so that I'm not tempted to drink it. Even though I know why it tastes bad, I can't help the feeling of disappointment.

I don't know about most people but to me, recently carbed beer just tastes horrible.

I'm on my 2nd keg (Ever) and I noticed what you said above is true. Its not the same after one week as it was at about three. Taste-wise

I need to get the ability to put more than one gas line on at a time and I only have one party tap. No gas manifold yet.

This last keg I put 30psi on vented about 6x and stored about 2 weeks in the fridge under pressure w/o a line hooked up. Used my gas/beer line to serve my other keg. Once it was empty I hooked up the currently-chilling keg. Sunday it was flat, same with yesterday only slightly better.

Need a job so I can expand my keg set-up...

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